2026-04 Full Time Swedish Learning

This month I started the government SFI course while looking for work, and the weather has been warming up.

Weather

The first week of April had brief snowfall. It stayed cold in the second week but became sunnier with slush and snow piles remaining in the shade in hedgelines and on the roads. The weather was changeable but got a lot sunnier as the month went on.

Conditions

Driving to my first local language class at the start of the month, I hit an especially deep and long patch of slush and the car went into a long-distance slide with the steering having no effect. The car was sliding roughly along the direction of the road but also slightly sliding towards a ditch on the passenger side. I realised I was over-correcting during the slide. The wheels would eventually catch again and if the wheels were at an extreme angle when that happened then the car might swerve in the opposite direction or even spin or flip. I mentally forced myself to straighten the steering wheel, which felt unnatural. The tyres caught dry road surface before the car reached the ditch, and I gingerly drove off.

I’m not sure if the car approaching behind saw what happened but I put my hazard-lights on for a few seconds to try to warn them. I think they got the message as they didn’t appear behind me after the next corner for some time.

Wildlife

The Cranes (“Trana”) and Herons (“Hägrar”) are back, and there are giant flocks of about 80 swans (“Sångsvan”) in the fields. We visited a seaside village and took photos of the birds which were Canadian Geece (“Kanadagås”) and I think Graylag Geece (“grågås”). I need to practise with the camera more because lots of photos were too out of focus.

In the garden we’ve seen Jackdaws (“Kaja”) Magpies (“Skata”), maybe a Robin (“Rödhake”), Wagtails (“Sädesärla”), Blue tits and Great tits (“Blåmes”, “Talgoxe”), lots of Sparrows (“Gråsparv”), Bullfinches (“Domherre”), Greenfinches (“Grönfink”) and Bramblings (“Bergfink”) which I’ve never seen before.

We’ve seen foxes (“Räv”) out in the daytime, and roe deer (“rådjur”). We found some big tufts of fox hair outside the front door.

We haven’t seen any moose yet (“Älg”). However they have been on TV. The Swedish SVT is the rough equivalent of the UK BBC and each year it plays “The Great Moose Migration” (“Den stora älgvandringen“) which is consists of views from multiple cameras placed along the migration route in the forest to capture the moose as they make various lake and forest crossings. It’s the sort of thing people have on in the background as they do house tasks. If interested, there are some summaries on YouTube.

Friend Visit

A friend from the UK came for a flying visit on the turn of the month start, an ex Royal Marine and Firefighter. He’d been working during the cold months much further north and was able to drop in for a night before heading down to Stockholm the next day. It was cool to see someone from one of my old friend groups.

I’d like to be in a better position to host people but the house is open plan which feels unwelcoming for overnight visitors currently in that it doesn’t give guests their own private space and there’s no sound isolation.

Like most Swedish properties, we have permission to place a 30m2 independent house (“Attefallshus”) on the land, which would be ideal for guests, but I need to be back in long term work before I commit to a project that expensive.

Swedish Lessons – SFI B

This month I’m off work so I signed up for the government Swedish For Immigrants (SFI) adult learning course to improve my Swedish. It involves attending a class about 40km away from 08:30 until 11:30 each weekday. I’ve made a dedicated blog post about what is on the course but there’s a quick summary below:

I was placed in SFI course B. In SFI B you’re expected to already know some basics. It then builds on that knowledge.

This level maybe doesn’t cover some aspects I had previously encountered with other tutors, but the lessons have made it clear that I had a lot of gaps in what I know, so I think the assessor got the placing right. I was quite out of practice.

• After my first couple of lessons and going through homework, the number of words and verbs I know seems good. I’m only encountering a few gaps but there are always more words to learn and it’s clear I do need to practise my understanding of the language rules.

• After a couple of weeks a lot of the language rules I’d found hard the first time I’d been introduced to them a couple of years ago, are more straightforward and natural.
• After week 3 I thought I was itchy for more. I am still making mistakes but all the parts I need to learn feel clear to me. It feels like it is just a matter of brute force now.
• At week 4 we had one lessons where there weren’t many pupils, and so the tutor did more direct conversation with us. I got picked up on lots of my verbal sentence structure so it was a good bringing-back-down-to-earth. We also did a short exam, and I’m likely to be put in the national test next month to move up to SFI C.

SFI was the major activity this month.

Meeting New People

Via SFI I’ve met Ukraine and German immigrants. The immigrants on SFI are generally open to having big conversations. It’s especially good when they don’t speak English at all, because we’re forced to communicate in Swedish with no escape. Someone made a small German cake for me to try. There’s been job search suggestions too. It’s been quite therapeutic being around a group of friendly people.

Mountain Bike Club

We’ve now started up a mountain bike club in the village and we’ve been out on a couple of rides. There’s just 3 of us riding currently but it’s a good start. Another person is also going to join us after they’ve recovered from an unrelated injury.

Compared to when I used to cycle regularly, my legs seem to have been replaced with lead weights and I’m carrying some surplus kilograms, but it’s good to be outdoors and learning new routes. I did check the map for cycling to SFI, but it’s about 3.5 hours each way by bike, which isn’t impossible but I don’t think I would be in a great shape for learning after that length of ride.

Community Work

As the snow melted it was a good time to litter pick. I collected two bags of litter from the property and the nearby public paths. The collected litter is a little bit awkward to get rid of as Swedish household waste disposal is geared up for recycling. So litter picking aftermath means sorting grim bits of litter covered in mud, or paying for the disposal of the litter by weight in the general waste.

I took the mountain bike up to the stuga that I helped repaint before winter. It was a tough journey through the remaining snow. At the stuga there’s a bit of painting to finish and the paint that we left in the stuga had separated and deteriorated in the cold.

I also donated a small amount to the effort to make a village BMX track. I think it would be a great asset but I need a new job before I can offer a bigger donation.

Spring Property Work

The snow clearing service had accidentally pushed a lot of gravel from the driveway onto the neighbours field so I spent a few evenings collecting buckets of gravel and redistributing it into the gravel areas of the garden.

I also cleared all the building supplies out of the greenhouse where I’d stored them for winter which took a while.

I prepared the hedgerow area we built before winter to be a drier-conditions planting area. I filled the gap with gravel to avoid water buildup next to the wood retaining wall. I then laid a thin layer of hessian to stop planting material falling straight into the gravel. After this I put a layer of compost from the compost heap mixed with exhausted soil from the greenhouse. Later, we’ll plant things that can survive in dry conditions and give some assisting watering until the plants are settled.

Car Repairs

In the sunnier weather I gave both cars a good wash which took ages as they had lots of winter grime.

The little red car lost a lot of air from one tyre on a short journey. It’s happened a couple of times now. It could be something punctured through the tyre or it could be the seal against the metal of the wheel is damaged.

At best it means taking the tyre off and resealing the tyre against the rim, which is not expensive. At worst it means a new tyre and in that case it would be ideal to change at least two tyres at once so that they match on each side (e.g. replace both front tyres).

I was also aware that the car is currently fitted with the original “eco” low rolling resistance tyres that the car started life with. These get poor reviews. This type of tyre gives good fuel economy figures but the other performance characteristics of the tyre suffer. This manifests in this case as greater stopping distance, poor grip in non-summer conditions, and complaints of significant aquaplaning.

I don’t feel great about a fuel economy bonus traded off against a safety compromise affecting my wife, so I budgeted some money for some well reviewed all weather tyres. They arrived on the last day of the month.

I checked before ordering that the local garage are happy to fit them. I did try to order through the local garage to keep the business as local as possible but they couldn’t get the tyre via their supplier.

More Car Repairs

We’re lucky to have two cars. So while my wifes car was out of action we still had use of mine. Sadly the black car must have felt left out or realised I had allocated all the months budget, and so invoked Murphys law the next week. After I hit an especially large spring pothole, a rear shock absorber broke off from the car body. The metal on metal thumping was not ignoreable and sounded expensive. I drove especially slowly to our local garage as the loose shock absorber banged against the wheel well of the car over even the slightest bump.

The local garage did a fast turnaround on it, and it’s all repaired now. But just before it went in the “service due” light also appeared on the dashboard, so it will also need a service next month.

Getting Swedish Music onto the Car Stereo

In the black car, driving each morning driving to SFI, I wanted to be in the zone with Swedish-speaking music, but I could never find Swedish music on the car stereo. The stereo picks up 3 stations. It’s either classical, talk, or international music. I wanted to listen to some fun Swedish music to sing along to. It sounds daft but it helps my pronunciation. However the car audio software/hardware technology is ancient and I spent an evening getting the stereo to accept music onto it.

The car was made 16 years ago so the stereo has a CD, Aux line-in, and a USB input, but the hardware and software is ancient. So what should have been a simple thing became a complicated evening.

• The stereo software can’t be updated via usb – assuming a useful update exists, it would be via special diagnostic devices and the files aren’t released to the public. Plus the limits might be hardware.
• Most music-listening nowadays comes via streaming. I couldn’t find a legal way to buy CD (or mp3) albums from Swedish artists Bolaget or Hooja. The songs are on Amazon UK Music as purchasable MP3 files, but Amazon wont let me purchase it without a UK invoicing address (other purchases are fine). I could buy them in Sweden on vinyl but that doesn’t help me.
• I can use the “Aux” port with a headphone cable but then I cant use any stereo controls to change a track. I’d have to fumble with a tablet while driving which is a bad idea.
• I could (naughtily) create MP3 files from YouTube versions of the songs and then create a CD using the files. I don’t keep burnable CD ROMS however, because time has moved on and there isn’t much demand for a disc that holds hardly any data and gets read errors if you sneeze near it. I mentally kept this as a fallback option though. A nostalgic part of me wishes MiniDisc was still a thing, but the last factories have closed down and the software needed to use it is under license from Sony, so there wont be any open-source hardware.
• So the best option is converted MP3 files on a USB stick. With the first attempt the stereo said the stick was unreadable. Some internet discussions revealed that the system only accepts certain sticks, so I went back and forth with my pile of spares until I found a USB stick that the car would accept.
• Then the stereo would only play files located in the base directory, not in folders.
• Then out of the 14 test MP3 files, it accepted only 2 of the songs and a few seconds of another. So then…
  • I tried removing all special characters from names
  • then I tried sanitising the metadata (Modern music files have information attached that lets stereos show track data, like the song name, artist, related album, release data, and similar).
  • I tried converting the files to the most commonly accepted audio bitrates and similar
  • then I removed certain types of modern meta tags completely
  • then I removed any reference to album art (a small thumbnail in the metadata), at which point everything worked

So it was an evening of trying everything until it worked.

Computer Stuff

Because the online AI services cost money and companies had a bad habit of misusing clients data, I had a go at setting up a home AI system, on a desktop I had. It went ok and I have it working and with different “personas” configured. Really the AI needs a modern graphics card in order to run bearably fast enough. The AI essentially uses the graphics card as a high speed brain. Without it, the speed of the responses is painfully slow.

The graphics card has to be large enough to fit the entire model into the cards own on-board memory, and that sets a minimum price point. That price point is significantly high, because everyone else wants the same or better spec of graphics card (24GB of onboard RAM and above) for exactly the same reason of running thier own AI, and demand is not expected to ease up for at least 2 years.

So the short version is that I’ve configured a local AI installation that can process confidential data and questions without sending data to third party servers, but due to financial constraints it means asking the question and then going away to make a cup of tea before the answer appears.

Other

Job applications are going out but I need to strike a balance between making the most of SFI to improve my Swedish, finding a job for income, and finding a long term job.

There’s a medical issue going on which friends and family will be aware of. I can’t write much more about it at the moment but I will be able to after summer.

I had to cancel our Swedish Citizenship application that I started in August. Sweden currently has a right wing government that voted on changing the requirements from 5 years of residency before citizenship could be applied for, to 8 years. Because we came here in 2020, we can’t fit the new requirement, and the politicians voted against any transition arrangements. This means our existing application will be reviewed under the new requirements when it eventually gets assigned to a caseworker. The migrations agency confirmed in a public statement that they will process and keep the fee of any existing application, assigned to a case officer, that doesn’t meet the new requirements. We don’t have a case officer yet so there is was time to cancel and I put in a request to get the approximately £260 fee refunded.